QiN Book Review

Elections, Change and the Religious Society of Friends

2008-09-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

Previous QiN Book Review:
Why Obama Can't Win

The True Believer - 1951
The Ordeal of Change - 1963

by Eric Hoffer

Non - Fiction

Review by G.L. Reinhart

Will historians 50 years hence mark the 2008 U.S. Presidential election as the beginning of ‘change’? These two books, written 50 years ago, by Eric Hoffer, a self-taught, workingman-philosopher have much to say about mass social change - as a poor substitute for true change.

In his two books above, Hoffer’s use of aphorisms and quotes of famous historical figures riveted the public - which during the 1960s was strangely - in the midst of mass social change. Hoffer's recommendation for what ‘we need’ - individual self-interest leading to a balanced individual self - didn't much coincide with the mass social movement of 1960s counterculture.

Hoffer reminds us of spoken truths - many times created in the day-to-day affairs of ‘men of action’, are the most valuable for true change to occur in individuals. Hoffer tells us that written thoughts, realized in quiet contemplation by ‘men of words’ are poor substitutes to the spoken words by 'men of action'. And the use of substitutes (for example, a government solution to every problem) is where the danger begins.

The spoken quotes and aphorisms abundant in both of these books are the succinct rhetoric which lead the reader to resonant truth. In the same way the Gospels were essentially collections of the sayings of Jesus, Hoffer penned a famous aphorism: “Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.” The resonance at putting down either of these two books for a breather might be similar to the resonance at taking a walk in the cool crisp air after a set of one-liners in a crowded Manhattan comedy club. How pithy and true these quotes resound when we come back to them time and time again.

Hoffer was arguably a laborer first and an observer second. His writing style was to the point - none too highbrow - again like the punch line of a one-line comic. The author's self-education, might have embodied the Quaker ethos of a basic and moral education, which sought knowledge for the common person to apply usefully in this world. His example was not of filling himself with erudite, theoretical knowledge. And, he was not afraid of hard physical work and its by-product - sweat.

Most, if not all, modern-day Quakers shy away from ‘blue collar’, ‘sweat equity’ jobs. Elite Quaker schools convene student conferences to discuss ‘sweatshops’ in developing countries. The declining membership of the Religious Society of Friends goes as far as to dissuade the people who do such work from joining Friends. How many plumbers are Friends?

Modern Friends mostly occupy erudite careers in academia and law (the careers Friends were first barred from) and vie for the few professional Quaker jobs at the American Friends Service Committee, Quaker Schools, the Democratic Party and other non-profits. It is not hard for the observer of Friends Society, or even any group of people, to see the enticement of taking the easy top-down solution to problem (by electing someone new) – in order to talk about change, but mostly to do nothing, and to stay the same. And this is probably why Hoffer entitled his 2^nd book, The Ordeal of Change – because change is uncomfortable hard work.

Regarding the importance of work, Herbert Hoover, the first Quaker elected president of the U.S., on his eighty-second birthday echoed a widespread feeling when he said that a man who retires from work “shrivels up into a nuisance to all mankind.”

Nuisances, like the raised-a-Quaker, Thomas Paine, a man of words, are instrumental in achieving revolution, however are not seen by the powerful men of action - as worthy of office or status after the 'change' takes effect. Thomas Paine was not given any office or power after the creation of the United States.

Hoffer is big on differentiating between those who have the drive and the responsibility to better themselves individually in self-interest and those who don’t. Hoffer says that those who don’t, tend to substitute improving themselves with joining mass movements, which (try to) effect systemic (political) change.

Mass movements can be religious, as manifest by organized churches, or they can be civil, as in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The important concept, according to Hoffer, the loss of oneself in a mass movement is dangerous in that like the Bosheviks, who had nothing left of themselves to draw from when another mass movement, such as that of Stalin’s purge, came along and crushed the former. One loses oneself in a movement, and in top-down change by focusing not on our own personal development, but what might be or should be (which, by the way, never happens) for the whole society in the future.

We hold on to hope and try to have faith that these changes will happen (although they ‘most likely’ will not). I’ve used aphoristic rhetoric, no matter how stark and painful they might sound, to emphasize truths in some of my own writing, for example quoting Benjamin Franklin: “Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.” Some modern religious folk are big on ‘fasting’ as an important spiritual learning tool. Why would this aphorism by such a sage be so off-putting to honest Quaker people? Bigger and bigger Quaker religious budget appetites when the constituent members can’t, or won’t pay for them unless they pay for them with ‘other people’s money’ means Friends Society is going to bed every night on a full stomach in debt. Just imagine the bad dreams.

Is hard physical work a mediator of wisdom? Hoffer makes one of many brilliant observations as to the ‘Protestant work ethic’ during the Reformation on page 26 of 'The Ordeal of Change' -

"…in the Middle Ages people did not show any marked inclination to work more than was necessary to maintain a fairly low standard of living. It was only in the sixteenth century that we see emerging a strange addiction to work…."

Quakers certainly felt, in their 1^st and 2^nd generations through the recent past that ‘meaningful work’ by the common person (the right amount and type of work which goes to some use of applied benefit) was somehow important to our spiritual condition. So where did ‘meaningful’ work end and ‘addictive’ work begin? Protestants must have been ‘addicted’ before Quakers were able to discern what ‘meaningful work’ meant. The Friends in the Truth (the early name for the Religious Society of Friends) weren’t gathered by George Fox until the middle of the 17^th Century.

And work should go to enhance the self-interest of the one who took the risk, faced the uncertainty, acquired the skill, expended the energy and lost the sweat to do the task, no? Hoffer believed that those who were fearful of such self-improvement, who somehow lacked focus or the skills to mind one’s own business resorted to substitutes, such as religious faith. Hoffer quotes George Fox’s military superior in the English Civil War and later Fox’s Lord Protector – "Cromwell used to say that common folk needed ‘the fear of God before them’ to match the soldierly cavaliers.”

So Hoffer advances and hypothesizes: “The substitute for self-confidence is faith; the substitute for self-esteem is pride; and the substitute for individual balance is fusion with others into a compact group (mass movement).”

The problem when whole society substitutes are inserted in place of the natural emphasis on individual self-interest, is when the real trouble begins, Hoffer feels. The loss of individual balance in human beings fosters movements such as Communism, Stalinism, Nazism, Fascism, and Nationalism. The inability to mind ones own business and the need to mind others’ business also creates religious movements.

Again from The Ordeal of Change:

“If we cannot have the originals, we can never have enough of the substitutes. We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising, and the pride we derive from an identification with a nation, race, leader, or party is extreme and overbearing.”

The newly converted Nazi, Fascist, Communist was more than willing to sacrifice individuality and freedom of choice if it meant he could also get rid of his blemished, imperfect self. Hoffer points out in The True Believer, “When we lose our individual independence in the corporate-ness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom – freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder, and betray without shame and remorse.”

The Quaker Society of Friends in its various Yearly Meetings, ‘wider governments’ and professional political action organizations might have been taken over by ‘misfits’ - those who mind others’ business to bring about ‘change’.

These would be the potential failed artists turned demagogue (the current elite ministers) who find it difficult to focus on improving themselves, who instead turn to ambient causes (like protesting anything and everything that doesn't directly concern them). These are the dishonest Friends who might find it difficult to remember when the last time they sweat in the carrying out of some task as a part of earning their living.

We might put our faith in the more sensible and practical, albeit few, young adults born after 1959 now up and coming among the Religious Society of Friends. Do we really want change? If so, where should that change begin?

Previous QiN Book Review:
Why Obama Can't Win

The White Guilt Trilogy

2008-06-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

Non-Fiction

The Content of Our Character – A New Vision of Race in America - 1988
White Guilt – How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era - 2006
A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win - 2007

Shelby Steele's Post-Election Interview
Forbes Magazine

by Shelby Steele

Review by G.L. Reinhart

I knew nothing but pureness, and innocence, and righteousness; being renewed into the image of God by Christ Jesus, to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell

- George Fox, Quaker - 1648

Innocent people are seldom perfect. And some get angry when they’d like to see others be better, more innocent, more quickly. But as William Penn said, “They have a right to censure, who have a heart to help.”

I experienced an angry style of convincement in the mid-1990s while on assignment to photograph Bill Cosby for a corporate promotion. I felt immediately thankful that he tried to 'help' me by making an important point to me that day – speak directly to him - not to the entourage.

Before his outburst - my reaction was to tremble in his tall, god-like presence and instead address the lesser people in the circle holding the clipboards – “Has anyone told Mr. Cosby what we’re doing today?” He was (and I assume still is) human enough to realize that he had torn me out a new one for a small, but meaningful infraction. At the end of the shoot, he invited me to have our picture taken together by my assistant. When I heard his ‘Pound Cake’ speech at the NAACP in 2004, I thought to myself – “I know that guy.”

The Bill Cosby of 2008 is no longer what Shelby Steele, author of the ‘White Guilt Trilogy’ calls a ‘bargainer’ in modern race relations. Cosby was a bargainer in his earlier years through the Cosby Show years when , like other African-American icons - Louis Armstrong, Sidney Portier, and more recently Oprah Winfrey, and Barack Obama – he first gave whites the benefit of the doubt with the expectation of being treated fairly in return. As an icon, Cosby could sell things to all people (Pudding Pops, etc) and I suspect, and according to Steele’s latest book ‘A Bound Man’, Cosby was turning into his present non-iconic non-bargaining true self when he chewed me out that day in the 1990s.

Cosby is no longer an icon and can no longer sell anything commercially. He now preaches vehemently to blacks (similar to how he let go on me, and how he let go on the NAACP in the Pound Cake speech). His message is similar to the that of Malcolm X : take individual responsibility for one’s own life. This is the only real way out of the African-American living nightmare of crime, (mostly black on black) shattered families, poor education from poor local schools, drug addiction and extramarital pregnancy. In essence, Cosby’s message is to ask blacks to stop being perennial victims, stop blaming others, and create their own opportunity.

And then there are what Steele calls ‘challengers’ are the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson – those who utilize the emotional rhetoric in maintaining the collective “black victim identity”, periodically granting whites their ‘innocence’. Challengers do this in return for money – for white support of corporate ‘diversity’ programs, preferential government programs, non-reform of welfare, and other systemic fixes. Quakers at FGC (Friends General Conference, a Philadelphia-based group) and various FGC member Quaker Yearly Meetings (regional organizations) are trying to decide if shaming sessions and the destined permanent jobs for blacks and reparations funds would finally exonerate Friends? Have these wider corporate, civil and religious government programs worked? Are whites off the hook by simply expressing a belief in these programs, and writing a check for reparations for past sins (or more likely getting someone else to pay for it)? Can whites continue to keep up innocent appearances and wash their hands of the issue of true black socio-economic parity with whites, when these systemic fixes simply haven’t worked?

For decades, we’ve cynically tossed around the cliché - political correctness - without really concentrating too hard on what it means. We want to go along to get along, mostly. So, why risk being ‘incorrect’ or called a ‘racist’ if one is white or an 'Uncle Tom' if one is black, if one doesn't accept the perennial ‘victim’ as the true African-American identity?

But Shelby Steele, a Hoover* Institute fellow and author of “A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win,” has more specifically called this age of political ‘correctness’ – the age of White Guilt.

Mr. Steele was quoted in the New York Times recently by saying that racism “no longer remotely accounts for the difficulties in black America.”

‘White Guilt’ began in in the late 1960s in the vacuum where the societal norm of white privilege and white moral authority had suddenly fallen away. White Guilt began when the message of Christian unity of Martin Luther King, Jr. became self-evident, the Viet Nam war began to go badly and when black power rose up to demand systemic government and corporate solutions for the past sins of whites. Mr. Steele acknowledges fully that Dr. King and those civil rights leaders who came before him used persuasion as the only means possible to try to achieve respect for what was under the skin in all of us. But, the period of White Guilt, which began after 1967 enabled angry demands to become an effective method for money to change hands. The solutions came in the form of government programs, corporate diversity programs, and ‘systemic change’ such as in President Johnson's Great Society, to redeem whites for their past sins. This disassociation with blacks (by paying them off from a distance) , according to Steele, began the modern era when blacks and whites together destroyed the promise of civil rights.

Steele, like some other African-American scholars has come down on the side of personal responsibility, and fidelity to principles of individual self-improvement and hard work as the only way blacks will truly respect themselves and be respected by themselves and others. Otherwise, the glass ceiling will remain, and the ‘system’ will continue, broken.

Steele says that ‘racism’ as a systemic evil is simply a code word periodically invoked by blacks to shame whites and for guilty whites to shame other whites. Money changing hands in the period of White Guilt keeps up appearances for those (black and white) who want to feel morally righteous. The payments from corporations like Toyota, for example, to Sharpton’s National Action Network (now under federal tax investigation), Steele feels, continuously disallows the real discussion of allowing blacks to achieve parity with whites. More importantly, Steele says that these ‘appearances’ by whites and ‘demands’ by blacks like Sharpton also prevent the implementation of real solutions to the problems African Americans continue to face.

Steele says that the only reason that people such as Sharpton continue to have influence on the mainstream is that White Guilt has allowed it (and the media cover him). Sharpton’s style would not have had any affect on whites before 1967.

Steele is an eloquent writer entwining his own personal experience as a black (his mother was white and his father was black, but he always felt growing up under white racism before 1967, that he was a member of the ‘black’ community) a college protester, and ultimately a college professor. Although he has had his angry “Cosby moments” at whites who feel he should be ‘down’ with the ‘black' [victim] identity - his writing style is sparsely descriptive, measured and reasonable. His writing comes from a self that can feel compassion for both ‘sides’ because in fact he is of both. In Steele’s writing, he has no ‘us’ and ‘them’ Steele writes only of self-respect, humanity and truth, which is sometimes hard for financially interested and or emotionally needy (depressed) people to hear.

The theme of this non-fiction trilogy can be summed up as ‘the search for innocence lost’. It could be the story of Adam and Eve, where whites - whether they feel personally responsible for their ancestors or not - still ate the apple taking advantage of slave labor, and feel some guilt or some ‘original sin’ at the inhumanity was done to a whole class of slaves by some of their ancestors. Some Friends today might feel that individual Quakers did the best they could at the time - because some owning slaves then was like some today driving motor vehicles, polluting the environment. It was (and is) simply the way the economic system worked (works).

After the modern developments in DNA technology, some feel the guilt of having ever once believed in the now ridiculous notion of ‘race’. Period. If one doesn’t believe in race, then how can one then imply ‘inferiority’ or ‘superiority’ from one ‘race’ to another?

These three books are not afraid to expose in a calm and well-crafted manner, the need for honest solutions, which will truly help blacks help themselves and achieve parity with whites. These solutions would surely require hard work by both individual blacks and individual whites in our daily lives. Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day – teach or inspire someone who doesn’t always want to work harder and learn how to fish, and hopefully he’ll get over his painful victim identity and he’ll eat forever.

In what might draw the biggest interest for readers at this moment in time - when Barack Obama last week sealed the nomination by the Democratic Party for President of the United States - Steele wrote ominously in 'A Bound Man' published in December 2007 -

"His (Obama’s) supporters do not look to him to do something: they look to him primarily to be something, to represent something. He is a bound man because he cannot be two opposing worldviews at the same time – he cannot grant whites their racial innocence (as a bargainer) and simultaneously withhold it from them (as a challenger).
When he finally lurches away from this falseness (since both ‘bargainers’ and ‘challengers’ are mask-wearers), there is no self to guide him toward a meaningful life."

The ‘White Guilt’ trilogy describes the American ‘politics of difference’ – the racial tsunami that has flowed and ebbed over the American political landscape in the last 40 years from the point of view of Steele, a clearheaded person who has walked a difficult path through it. And like Moses, Steele parts the roiling waters for those who are not afraid, for those who seek truth and will follow. Like George Fox, the original gatherer of the Quakers or the ‘Friends in the Truth’, Steele leads us to the mountaintop out of the political morass - for those who will do the hard work of walking uphill to get there. Yet some will be afraid (of the hard work and the inevevitable shaming) to walk with Steele toward true renewal, true innocence and true honesty. What can Friends do to alleviate that fear?

* Herbert Hoover was a fine Quaker, humanitarian and progressive politician.

Read about modern-day Bill Cosby: The Atlantic Monthly – May 2008 - This Is How We Lost To The White Man

Non-Fiction

2007-12-03T23:23:00.001-08:00

Kristoff: NYTimes Opinion - Bleeding Heart Tightwads

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Review by G.L.Reinhart

Who Really Cares
America's Charity Divide

2006 Basic Books

"Not to be a socialist* at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head."
- French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

Does the author ask us a question in the title of his book?

If so, the answer I’d like to suggest is:

Those who have a heart and a head.

Proof is relevant in this book. The author, Arthur C. Brooks, a self-proclaimed political liberal proved his previous inclination wrong – that liberals must surely give more to charity than conservatives. He proved himself wrong by looking at facts, or data about the act of voluntary giving to charity – which he equates to really caring. (Giving by re-distributing income through taxes is not voluntary, in his own intuitive definition.)

Politically conservative religious people statistically give more to charity than politically liberal secular people. Brooks says that the mere belief, or political opinion, of liberal people that the government ‘should’ re-distribute income through forced taxation, reduces the giving behavior of these individuals, or at least this group of individuals.

Republicans are also statistically ‘happier’ than Democrats, he says, based on evidence he’s found in the data. Brooks cites 10 empirical studies which he shares in the appendix of his 2006 book to support his hypotheses.

He goes one step further. Not only are conservatives wealthier and happier for some unknown reason - the voluntarily giving of time and money to charity, which conservatives do more than liberals - makes them even happier, more exposed to opportunity, and hence more successful. He likens this phenomenon, as a sort of social / individual self-propelled continuous feedback loop. He takes association one step further and shows causality. Read it for yourself and see if you agree.

Brooks’ thesis, weaved in a common thread throughout the book, is not who cares - which I think we all do mostly – but who gives, and how much. The overriding factor Brooks keeps coming back to is that religious people are more apt to voluntarily give the most. Religious people have more children (itself a charitble act) and they give more to both religious and secular charities than non-religious people. Relgious people also teach their children charitable giving by their example and the practice of giving is shown to be passed on through generations. Brooks also says that religious people statistically tend to be politically conservative. Of course, it’s not true in every case, or possibly in the case of YOU.

So, just in time for the U.S. Presidential Primaries and for the day called ‘Christmas’ which cometh shortly, we might take a moment now to look at giving to others, through charity, both secular and religious and what your politics might have to do with your giving behavior. After all, Brooks was writing about those who are one of various sub-groups of people. I’m writing to YOU.

I recently wrote an essay, ‘What the Quaker Faith Costs YOU’, in which the use of 'YOU' was deliberately provocative, in that Friends mostly try not to focus on individuals - their merits or their faults. I’ve experienced liberal urban Quaker meetings where operating budgets and committee rosters have not been met with sufficient giving. The conundrum of what and how meetings should ask for money and for time just keeps cycling around and around – broken. Who Really Cares may be an affirmation of what I’ve experienced, or it might also have important news for THEE, Friend.

My message in any future segments of ‘What the Quaker Faith Costs YOU’ is what the giver – YOU - to your Quaker Meeting, as long as YOU and your Meeting have done the hard work of putting the correct numbers on each budget expense line - will receive spiritually, and possibly materially, for the giving or the self-sacrifice YOU have made. If Brooks is right, your own experience might mirror what the data told him about who gives and how much.

The quote in the beginning of this review should speak to the urban, baby-boomer hippie generation, liberal-leaning adult-children I've mostly experienced who call themselves Quakers. Quakers once called themselves ‘Children of the Light’, as Christ asks us to receive the Kingdom of Heaven like a little child, or one will never enter it.

But how much do children share things on their own? Can we have the heart of a child and have the head of an adult at the same time? I alluded to some difficulty in my own life when I was 20, to achieve this kind of integrity in a previous essay - 'The Costs of the Quaker Faith'.

When will Quakers begin to behave as a responsible, thinking and caring adults and start to give more? How can YOU possibly get off the treadmill and place yourself on the playground jungle-gym feedback loop of giving and receiving? Do you think if you did, you would start being happier, wealthier, more community-connected, harder working, more religious, more politically active, more productive and successful?

Why not try? I think the answer is right in front of us. Give. Give a little more. Get involved. Get more involved.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those who would like to connect more vibrantly to one’s religious faith, and investigate how their own giving might be the key that unlocks the door to meaningful spiritual growth - true spiritual growth which is rooted in this material world.

One last assurance. For Democrats, the future is unknown, in terms of whether the party will reverse polarity in voluntary giving to charity in the future. It has happened in the past in the U.S., when Republicans were liberal, and Democrats, were…not.

This book review has an interesting link to the previous book review - God's Name in Vain. Brooks doesn't ask, but I inject here: What if our government stops being something that equitably re-distributes income to those who have less?

Studies show that giving behavior stops when those who simply 'have the opinion' that the government 'should' give. Giving also stops when the poor who do not work receive government aid (vs. the working poor who actually give more than the middle class).

What if the reflex of giving behavior is lost and the future government turns into, by evolution or revolution, something we don't like? Like in the struggle of Church vs. State in the previous review, what if the government assumes all the functions of religion, non-profit and volunteer community organizations, which are heavily dependent on voluntary charity?

Larger issues aside, maybe you should focus on YOU. The change in order to save the world, might just begin with thee.

* Ironically, ‘republican’ was used instead of ‘socialist’
when the quote was originally coined. The phrase originated
with Francois Guisot (1787-1874) and French Premier Georges
Clemenceau (1841-1929) later used ‘socialist’.

Book Review – Non-fiction

2007-10-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

Vanity, Religion and Politics

by G.L.Reinhart

“And without religion, our politics will be nothing – which means, in a democracy, that our nation will be nothing. And without renewal, without a retreat from the wilderness and a return to the garden, without more time spent listening to the voice of God and less time spent drafting position papers or fighting over who will be in charge of what - without these necessities, religion will be nothing too.”

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This is the absolutist and 'radical' closing message of Stephen Carter’s 2001 book - 'God's Name in Vain' The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics - an inspired, thoughtful and well-constructed argument for the proper role of religion in American politics. Why review this book in 2007?

With the 2008 presidential election looming - a mere 13 months away - we can feel that familiar warm wind building again. Now - more than a year in advance of our next fall festival of federal democracy - is a very good time for Friends to know about this book.

Every four years of late, in some strange cycle, I’ve felt Quakers start to glaze over and prepare for what has become among Friends, ‘the red hour’ * where everything Friends may have been doing, gets put on hold while The Religious Society of Friends temporarily transforms into a quasi Politcal Action Committee.

Every four years, on the East Coast, in unprogrammed religious meetings, we might notice the increasing din over our sparse assemblies for what others in the wider world should do, and how presidential elections will hopefully go (to the Democrats).

In June 2004 I attended a conference in New York City entitled ‘Inequality Matters’ – it was something of a rah-rah for the Democratic Party come that November. I wrote a report of my experience there to Friends at my former Monthly Meeting who supported my attendance at the secular conference. The partisan nature of the event didn’t enourage me to share with other conference attendees what Friends might believe Equality means. Why waste myself when the goal and outcome of the conference was already decided – to have organized discussions with like-minded liberal people about issues which were already agreed upon? Oh yes, the Democratic Party lost the presidential election in 2004.

Stephen L. Carter, is a politically liberal African-American legal scholar with conservative leanings - yet he has admittedly benefited by affirmative action. He’s no ‘Clarence Thomas’, however Carter is a transparently faithful Christian and an Episcopalian. Carter is a professor at Yale University Law School.

Carter’s book states - “in the late 20th Century, what was once mostly a protector of religion from the state, the wall of separation of Church and State has quickly become an insulator of the state to religious speech – to moral guidance". Some feel that individual humans or electoral politics don’t need religion to be guided in moral issues - for example, those who believe that legal ethics are moral in and of themselves. Carter, however, equates religion with the ultimate shaper of modern morality, even in politics, if done correctly.

The 2007 book Head and Heart - American Christianities, by Garry Wills, is in accord with Stephen L. Carter’s book reminding us about the Third Commandment. Wills’ review caption on the NPR show ‘Fresh Air’ broadcast of his interview states – “separation was meant as "the great protector of religion, not its enemy." Click on the above link to listen to Garry Wills interview, and to read a chapter from his book, which describes how the Quaker, Mary Dyer was hanged.

But, it is difficult for the politically liberal with vivid short-term memories to get their spiritual arms around this important concept when the conservatives’ invocation of God’s name helped the Republicans win the last two presidential elections. So, the conservative, right-wing Christians won then, right?

Carter begs to differ - however, for a reason that the politically liberal might also find difficult to agree with. (Carter does not fit the cookie cutter mold for ‘progressive’ liberal-think.) Carter explains that fundamentalist (mostly referred to in the modern media as ‘Evangelical’) Christians who formed most of the ‘The Moral Majority’ and the ‘Christian Coalition’, in changing American electoral politics, also changed their religion in the process - for the worse. The degradation was in compromise, in muting the radical message of their faith, in order to fulfill ends in the physical world which were achieved through politics.

Politics, Carter postulates, are about winning. Political compromise is utilized by politicians as a tool to domesticate ‘radical’ religious ideas and to co-opt and silence those faithful persons - who might influence large groups of voters in the wrong direction in an election. Professor Carter gives many examples, but cites mostly one example of how religion gets changed when it attempts to affect electoral politics (and the issues that drive them).

Carter's main example in this regard is of Fannie Lou Hamer, an African American Christian who was circumvented and her religious message co-opted and transformed by Hubert Humphrey at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her message - to alter what she was led to believe was a corrupt system which should be fundamentally changed ‘ to one where Christian love would form the foundation for how humans treated each other’ - was diverted into what is called 'Equality', for African-Americans with whites. (Why would Hamer want to be ‘equal ‘to those who treated her as such?)

Again, Carter, although originally helped by ‘Equality’ possibly in the form of ‘Affirmative Action’ or ‘Equal Opportunity’ programs, is not a cookie cutter advocate for those programs. Which makes Carter, even as an African American, hard for many of all ethnicities, with minds made up, to heartily embrace. Carter, to the horror of some black and to some white, has been quoted in the New York Times, “No weight is added to a position because somebody is black. One has to evaluate an argument on its own merits, not on the race of the person making it."

Carter, comes down on the side that feels that the state has made the original and the ongoing rules between Church and State. He argues that the state allows motions to its courts, and the courts and their judges are not a check on the state, but in fact, another part of the state. The courts and judges decide when the wall separating Church and State is breached. This might be OK now, he says, but what if our government were to evolve into something like the Nazi’s of the 1930’s and 1940’s, or of other equally totalitarian infamy such as the Stalinists or Maoists , for examples? Should the state have the ultimate right to decide when religious speech or action crosses the line? Should the state have the ultimate right to say what is moral and what is not, without any influence by religion? It is going more and more that way, Friends.

Carter theorizes that the primary concern for a state, through politics, is to survive. The United States of America , he says, controls (the wall between itself and) religion by way of the tax code – especially the 501 (c) (3) subsection which describes how a religious community can speak or act and keep its tax exempt status. Oh gee, here we go again with money, money, money. Our religion isn’t affected by money. Think again.

Carter writes that the main role of religion is to resist. Interesting, in that Quakerism, as much as it is supposed to be one of affirmation of the good, or of God, in each human being, is still sometimes a religion of ‘no’, isn’t it? Try describing Quakerism to someone who doesn't know anything about it, and you'll most likely find yourself presenting some of the often heard Quaker rhetoric, as vague as it is, in saying, 'We don’t believe or do this or that'. George Fox began the Peace Testimony with - 'We utterly deny'…. And speaking of rhetoric, Carter is quoted near the beginning of his book:

“And there lies the difficulty when God-talk mixes with the partisan side of politics: More than likely, for too many people with causes to push and desires to fulfill, the name of God will collapse into a mere rhetorical device. Instead of maintaining the sacred character guaranteed by the Third Commandment, God’s name becomes a tool, a trope, a ticket to get us where we want to go.”

So, what’s your point, in writing this review, Friend, you might ask? It takes one to know one. If conservative Christians were changed negatively by their entry into American electoral politics, why isn’t the Quaker faith also sullied, and in danger of losing its true idenity, if it crosses the line, and is co-opted by a large (left-wing) political movement?

Quakers were mostly not mentioned in this book. For example ‘the liberty of conscience’ and its important contribution to the U.S. Constitution, via William Penn’s Frames of Government for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was not mentioned in being a protector of personal and corporate religion against intrusions by the state, or by the majority, for example. The Quaker faith was only mentioned in this book, when it came to abolition in the United States.

Considering that Carter, as an African-American, feels strongly about the issue of slavery and religion’s role in its end in the U.S., read the following section of Carter’s book and replace ‘sentiment’ with ‘conscience’:

“The historian Don Fehrenbacher once wrote that the reason slavery was able to persist for so many decades was that those supporting it were moved by interest whereas those opposing it were moved by sentiment. In other words, the slaveholders would actually be affected in their daily lives by the discontinuance of the institution, whereas the abolitionists, by and large, did not suffer any personal consequences if slavery continued [or discontinued]. It is an uneasy truth of history that materialism tends to trump idealism, even though subsequent events often prove that the idealists were right all along. Much human misery could have been avoided had enough others, at key moments in the past, spun political interest out of idealistic sentiment.

One force that can weave sentiment into interest is religion, for religion, at least in its Western model, tends to point the believer away from the material and toward the transcendent."

Carter evidently does not know of how Quaker businesspersons somehow wove Integrity and the other Quaker Testimonies, into their daily lives, or at least tried as hard as they could. Many Quakers today do not try to reconcile their daily lives or their professions, with their faith. It might be easier for Friends to simply become teachers and social workers, buy fair trade coffee, use low energy light-bulbs, and drive hybrid cars.

But Stephen L. Carter is to this Friend, an inspired writer and clear thinker, who tries very hard, and does very well at dissecting the difference between religion's role in helping elect a particular candidate or political party, versus how religion can and should be solely used to try and change the hearts of those who are elected, no matter who they are or in which party they affiliate. God’s Name in Vain – The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics, is well worth reading, if one can get one’s hands on, and arms around a copy soon.

Buy this book and support QiN.

* ‘The red hour’ is a reference to the original Star Trek television series episode – ‘The Return of the Argons’. The episode stays with me from childhood, somehow as a prequel to how individuals, even Friends, are ‘absorbed’ into calm mindsets, and who loose their tranquility, and go nuts, in a sort of poltiical frenzy, every so often.

Book Review – Non-fiction

2006-09-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Paradox of Choice – by Barry Schwartz - 2004

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – by John M. Perkins - 2005
The Wisdom of Crowds – by James Surowiecki - 2004

Ó 2006 by G. L. Reinhart

Into my world, came three unrelated how-things-work books. After reading these consecutively, I asked myself - can 'Confessions' give us 'Wisdom' to clarify a 'Paradox'?

‘Confessions’ attempts to exonerate the writer’s part in his own description of the United States’ economic steamroll over developing countries. Perkinss enlightens us to the invisible conspiracy of epic proportions behind the scenes in the late 20^th Century. But the sentimental and diffident kiss-and-tell didn't make it for me. The writer’s theory of ‘corporatocracy’ is sometimes palatable in terms of the profit-making by the millions of unrelated, yet connected, benefactors of the American ‘Empire’. Yet, it is sometimes hard to believe the excommunicated, the jilted, or the loser, in the post-game analysis, no matter how right they may be.

He theorized that if third-world dictators were not in the back pocket of the US interests, and didn’t capitulate quietly to US pressure (the author gave examples of Omar Torrijos in Panama, and his successor, Manuel Noriega), Perkins said, what happened to these two, would and did happen to others. In his own description, Perkins was an economist paid to inflate a country’s ability to pay for electrification projects. This so that 'American contractors secretly in cahoots with his consulting firm, could make money hand over fist'. This ostensibly so the 'U.S. government could then control these countries with staggering debt'. The corrupt free market (what was done quietly in our name) with the aid of corrupt local politicians, were giving developing countries the choice and the ability to enter the 20^th Century.

Which brings us to having choice in a world growing more complex by the minute, no matter where one lives.

Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore College professor clues us in on a somewhat Quakerly concept of being satisfied with limited options, many times considering one option at a time and simply saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The modern world gives us seemingly unlimited options. Are we happier for more and more choice? Schwartz thinks not. However, most would bristle at the thought of a central committee in a command economy, making decisions on what style, color and quantity of shoes to produce for us to be able to buy.

As the world gets more complicated and choices more abundant, miniscule and immediate, Friends find it harder and harder to isolate themselves from this luxury and complexity.

Schwartz’s hypothesis says that having too many choices creates psychological stress, especially when combined with regret - if we had just made a better decision and picked this one instead of that one. But we as Friends do not pick among shades of color in decisions mostly (as Schwartz also reminds us against in order to be satisfied persons), we have business brought to us usually requiring a ‘yea’ or ‘nay’.

Good decision-making and governance are on many of our minds of late, considering the recent news article in the

Philadelphia Inquirer regarding Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s now publicly exposed problems of some being frustrated with the state and speed of its decisions.

James Surowiecki has written a very important work, mentioning historic Friends at key points in his thesis: the best decisions are made by groups of cohesive but decentralized, independent thinkers.

Critics of Quakerism cite the ‘tyranny of peer pressure’ in making us less than independent individuals. We have political alliances within our Society and Friends sometimes feel we should ‘go along to get along’ where we become so identified with the group that the possibility of dissent seems practically unthinkable. This very explanation figures heavily in Surowiecki’s thesis about how groups should not make decisions.

The flip side of that conundrum is the trust Friends hopefully have for each other in this decision process. Many times we must know each other (well) before we can trust each other, and Surowiecki has credited 19^th Century Friends, as having the intra-group trust which enabled modern capitalism to develop and flourish. (Because without some inherent trust in a system, the cost of policing such would obviate any benefit that it offers.) Quakers were remarkable in the public eye for their trustworthiness and cooperation, simply because it was the exception to the general way of deception and sharp dealing at the time. And many times it made Friends wealthy.

Even in modern times, we find that in both Friends Society, as well as the wider society, Surowiecki writes, “ if trust is the most valuable product of (market) interactions, corruption is the most damaging.” Friends many times take the long-term perspective on our Society, and trust in each other seems to be bolstered from this perspective. So Friends in Philadelphia, and all other places might consider their trust of one another and how that might be bolstered.

Surowiecki, describes how the economic bubble of the 1990’s removed the long-term perspective from Wall Street’s view. Investors also stopped doing due diligence because of the large short-term returns – hence the famous scandals of Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and WorldCom. And auditors, the supposed system guardians of business integrity, also became so identified with this success, they failed in their vigilance, in their rush to believe the hype, and to share in the wealth.

Failures of decision-making where dissent was suppressed have expressed in many famous examples. The author cites two - the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961) and the Columbia disaster (2003). The Columbia Mission Management Team failed to evaluate properly the critical effect of debris hitting the exterior insulation of the craft before the ship’s re-entry into the atmosphere. The team’s Chief structured the agenda and dialog tightly in the committee meeting and proposed the issue as already resolved before any independent thinking could have occurred. At least we Friends never do that.

Surowiecki cites NASA as transformed at some point in recent history - from a bottom-up, meritocratic culture, into a centralized hierarchy that certainly failed in that Columbia mission. The author also cites other contributing factors in that most of the newer NASA employees come directly from graduate school and do not have the previous work experience to enable the group to have important work experience and diversity of opinion. Even though aerospace engineers in the 1960’s wore the same white shirt and crew cut, they embodied the diversity and independence of opinion which ‘put a man on the moon’.

But, even considering the Apollo era – ‘the Eagle has landed’ - in an obvious analytical and engineering success - Friends might still feel that spirituality is part of the truth in our world. In ‘Confessions’ John Perkins felt those who are primitive, spiritual and exploited - The Condor’ - might have something to teach the developed, rational and consumerist world - ‘The Eagle’.

Perkins closed his work quoting ‘The Prophesy of the Condor and Eagle’. The prophesy, from the mists of history, says that around 1490, these two paths of consciousness, would converge and would nearly drive the Condor to extinction. But, according to legend - 500 years later - in the New Age, or the Age of Aquarius - the Eagle and Condor would have the opportunity to make peace and fly together in the same sky, along the same path. Could now be our opportunity to solve the paradox with pure wisdom?

To Submit a Book Review for Publication

2006-09-28T18:22:00.000-07:00

To submit a Book Review for Publication please do the following:

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Send a word processing, or .txt attachment (please not WordPerfect) as your manuscript, limited to 1000 words for each book you review. For multiple book reviews, please limit your manuscripts to 700 words per book.

On the top of your manuscript, please indicate the Title, Subtitle, Author's Full Name, and Year the book was published. Please also indicate if the book being reviewed is Fiction or Non-Fiction

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Report on 'Inequality Matters'

2006-09-28T17:55:00.001-07:00

Inequality Matters was held at New York University, New York City

June 9, 2004

Ministry and Counsel Committee

Brooklyn Meeting

110 Schermerhorn Street

Brooklyn, NY 11201

Dear Friends,

This is to thank you for supporting my participation in the conference: Inequality Matters 2004. A report follows.

Although it was spiritually stressful to me as a Friend, the experience was valuable, and I met persons who I feel we can work with both in the Quaker community as well as the wider world. The only other Quakers I saw on the guest list were a Friend from New Haven Friends Meeting, and someone from the AFSC. It would have been good to have other Friends from our area there since break out groups formed often and it was impossible for me to hear what happened in other groups.

The atmosphere of strife between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ was prevalent. The focus most of the time was on a pep rally style, call to arms about the upcoming Presidential Election. The theme of the conference, however, was to address the increasing chasm between the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have nots’ in terms of wealth and power in the United States.

The opening evening featured two notable speakers. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote the book ‘Nickel and Dimed’ about her experience going under cover as a low-wage worker in America. The most powerful and articulate speaker of the whole weekend was Bill Moyers. If one could imagine Bill Moyers on television in his commentary style, he was many times more eloquent and powerful in person to a crowd of about 400 which was eager to get angry. Although Bill Moyers did not offer specific suggestions as to ‘how’ we might overcome this widening chasm, or reverse its separation, he did allude to the concept that ‘Americans must work for the building of individual wealth as well as for the Commonwealth’.

Commonwealth is an important concept for Friends also. William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania on this concept. Ernest Bader, a Quaker, set up a Commonwealth, by charter he gave the Scott Bader Company to its employees. How do we build Commonwealth? Moyers didn’t elaborate on that. But we as Friends know that we might look at the charter of Scott Bader as an example. Today, Scott Bader is still known as a highly successful chemical company (in England) and has spun off similarly structured, self-governing companies where the scope of the original firm was unable to deal with the new circumstances in a Friendly manner.

The next day, the speakers included William Greider, a reporter for ‘The Nation’ and writer who recently wrote the book: “The Soul of Capitalism”, concerning the concentration of wealth and power in America. The thesis of his book as well as the focus of his speech, was that Americans should not be looking toward the (federal) government to solve the problem of inequality. He feels that citizens might do better at influencing the government by learning how to build consensus in the workplace first, in new, creative organizations founded on principles of equality, responsibility and sharing of risk and financial participation. Since we have been taught to live in an environment that requires much less responsibility at work, which for most of us means a living within a top-down decision structure, we find it natural to follow orders and carry that model into our political lives.

I was the first in line at the microphone to ask Bill Greider a question. The moderator made three people ask questions and then had the panel of two, including Greider, answer all at once.

My question began as I read from ‘The Soul of Capitalism’. I introduced myself to the panelists as a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and then read from page 17:

Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has described a more supple social definition of poverty that is more relevant to our condition. Poverty, he suggests, is when people lack the means to appear in public without shame. By that standard, many more Americans are impoverished that the government has calculated, and Sen’s definition perhaps captures the real inner dynamic driving mass consumption beyond acquiring the basic necessities.

I then asked the question: Considering this definition, should we also consider spiritual poverty as an important factor in the chasm of inequality?

My question was answered by the second panelist, Reverend Robert Franklin, of Emory University, when he said, after answering the other two questions at length, ‘and yes, spiritual poverty is important.’

I wrote to William Greider after the conference. His response is attached.

In a breakout session that day, I heard speakers give feedback from focus groups on words that the general public finds palatable and non-threatening when social issues are being discussed. The words ‘Equality’ and ‘Justice’ are threatening or possibly too confrontational in the ears of the general public. Words like ‘fairness’, ‘opportunity’, and ‘stewardship’ were evidently more sonorous words in the minds of the public. I believe ‘the public’ was defined as focus groups from all over the country, including the Midwest, and the South.

On the third day, I attended a breakout session sponsored by Acorn, a national activist group for political representation and action. The session was entitled ‘The Living Wage’. Since I am hoping to work on a concern for Economic Justice, as you all know about, I attended this breakout session, even though there was another one, which Friends might have been interested in, regarding giving voting rights to former felony convicts.

Once again the two speakers from Acorn were obviously oriented to a warlike stance in a struggle with business owners, especially restaurant owners, it seemed. We had introduced ourselves in the beginning of the session, and I simply said I was with ‘the Quakers’.

The modus operandi of Acorn seems to be to organize local residents in a community to try and raise the minimum wage for a certain local area through government intervention and ordinance, whether it be a city, county, or state. As the speaker explained her difficulty in battling the Restaurant Owners Association, for example, referring to the business owners as ‘ogres’, is that they fight her tooth and nail. I asked her if she had ever tried to show these owners examples of successful businesses, which pay their employees a living wage? She said, ‘No, we don’t do that.’ I later wrote to her, explaining this concept, as well as offering her some assistance in giving her examples which show how financially successful a business (even a restaurant) can be by managing with an enlightened vision.

My feeling Friends, similar to Greider’s, is that government intervention and regulation are sometimes necessary, but are costly substitutes for situations which cannot be resolved by individual business owners and their stakeholders. There are some workers for which the minimum wage should be what it is, like students who are living at home. I understand, that companies have the upper hand many times, filling their work schedules with all part time positions to deny full time benefits to most workers, etc. However there is an enlightened way for these owners to be convinced of the ‘right’ way to treat employees and the ‘right’ way to pay them a living wage. If we treat the business owners as ‘the enemy’ than they will certainly retrench and hire expensive lawyers to protect their interests. When legislation is passed for tighter regulation, companies spend more time and money in complying with these regulations which costs customers more for products and services.

Indeed one of the outreach goals for a worldwide group of Quakers concerned with Friendly commercial business practices will most likely be to promote the changing of individual hearts in this manner. Once there are enough examples of this model to show the rest of the world that it is possible and successful, the tide will turn naturally and the sun will rise on a new way which recognizes ‘that of God’ in each person.

I had to leave early, right before the ending of the break-out session as we were behind schedule from a delay earlier in the day. I quietly left the plush room in the newly built Kimmel Center, previously the Loeb Student Center when I was a student at NYU 20 years ago. I pushed open the high-tech classroom door. As it slowly closed on a compression hinge, I heard the coda to the presentation. The speaker continued, ‘To end on a depressing note…ker-thunk”, the door closed behind me. In the engineered silence of circulation fans and carpeted hallways, I thought to myself, ‘Whew, that was a close one.’ Floor-to-ceiling windows gave me an elevated view north to through the late spring trees of Washington Square Park toward the backdrop of Midtown. I padded quietly toward the elevators contemplating my spiritual Friends at Brooklyn Meeting.

In Friendship,

Friend Glenn

Subject:

Re: Quaker Witness in Business / from Inequality Matters

Date:

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 20:13:20 +0000

From:

“William Greider”

To:

"G.L.Reinhart"

Dear Glenn -- First, thank you for the terrific letter and confirming thoughts. I can tell you have a sense of the impasses as well as the great possibilities. As a reporter, having traveled around this country for many years among both the influential and the marginalized, I have picked up an abiding conviction that people are closer together than they imagine -- if they would only lower their guards a bit and listen more closely to others they assume to be adversaries or disinterested. One problem, as you point out, is their accumulated anger. It blocks them from trusting this route and so it seems easier to settle for continued combat -- even though the imbalances of power make that a more unlikely path to deep change.

In short, I am very interested in hearing more about the Friends' Business experiences and your own book in progress. I am especially eager to talk about the entry techniques -- how people can begin to engage these questions in a business setting or start an enterprise or use their leverage in different ways. I am a lapsed Presbyterian myself, but my long ago forebears were Mennonite who settled in William Penn's Commonwealth (south of Lancaster PA) with land grants from Penn's Land Commission. The original Republic was not ready for such advanced ideas...but maybe it can be led to reconsider them.

Let's do continue our conversation. I must appreciate your thoughts. Best regards, Bill Greider

1025 Connecticut Avenue NW #205

Washington DC 20036

website: williamgreider.com

-------------- Original message from "G.L.Reinhart" : --------------

Dear Mr. Greider,

Thanks again for your speech today, I thought you were quietly eloquent, in the manner of your book, that I read from today at the microphone.

In plain language you really explained 'how' we can begin to close the equality gap in democratic power and economic wealth. Your suggestions for how we might do this today have been practiced in Friends' businesses for over 300 years, valuing integrity highly and treating people kindly and fairly.

I believe many at the conference are just too angry to begin to want to cooperate with 'the other side' in solving the problem. I hope we can discuss ways to remove this anger, or re-channel it in a positive manner rather than in its current hostile tone.

In any case, I mentioned some Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends around the world, are promoting the current and historic examples of business integrity, including how workers in companies participate in both decision making and profit sharing, in a Commonwealth organization. These ring true to us as it seemed they did for you in your speech today. Your question to us seemed to be 'are we ready now'?

The big words I believe, which many (liberals) don't want to deal with is 'responsibility', and 'risk' which you touched on very poignantly.

One other idea which you may want to consider, which contradicts the anachronistic yet still pervasive master-servant relationship which you mentioned. This runs parallel to Commonwealth and is called the concept of Servant-Leadership, which was created by a Quaker and is now practiced successfully in many companies who know nothing of Quakerism, just that the method works for them.

The concept of smallness also I believe was touched on. A Quaker named E.F. Schumacher wrote a book in the 1970's "Small is Beautiful" which discussed the Commonwealth idea as well as the concept of owning one's workplace, as you also mentioned today. Schumacher was highly influenced by Mohandas K. Gandhi.

I am also writing a book on the topic of Quaker Integrity in Business and how it might be utilized in today's world. I hope to quote parts of 'The Soul of Capitalism' in my book, since your ideas are very interesting to me and in harmony with us.

Would you like to stay informed about and possibly participate in the Worldwide Quaker Witness in Business Group's activities?

Friendly Regards,

Glenn R.

Subject:

Jen Kern / Inequality Matters presentation

Date:

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:49:24 -0700

From:

"G.L. Reinhart"

To:

Jen Kern ( National Living Wage - Acorn )

Dear Jen Kern,

Thanks for you presentation representing Acorn at the Inequality Matters meeting today on the Living Wage concept.

The Friends sometimes known as Quakers, have run businesses for centuries with the main goal of 'doing good' first, by treating employees with respect, including all in consensus decisions, and paying a living wage. Businesses under this model have been financially successful without unions since each employee has the ear of management and each employee feels, and is valued and is given the correct environment in which to flourish to one's highest potential.

Many times employees of Quaker influenced businesses are treated and paid like partners, and given the appropriate responsibility of participating in management.

This concept has living examples of financial success by Quakers and non-Quakers. We feel that there is 'that of God' in each person, no matter how depraved that person may be, whether he or she is a murderer or a greedy person. If you feel that you would like to offer 'encouragement' to changing the poor spirits of some of the business owners or 'ogres' as some referred to them, rather than the unfortunate tactic of 'fighting' with them, we might help Acorn show them that an enlightened self-interest, as a replacement for pure altruism, or our concern to 'do good' first and foremost, will pay them back better than will cutting corners.

As William Greider said yesterday in his speech, "the more we begin to participate in decision making at work, the more we will begin to be interested in democratic participation in government". I tend to agree with him that this 'organic' route is the way it will work the best in removing the apathy of the public in their own self-determinism. Even unions do not guarantee that workers will participate in decision-making. Apathy can run through employee unions as well and action can become institutionalized, become top-down and inorganic. No one can force employees or citizens to be enthusiastic or vigilant; they have to want to be involved.

We can force businesspersons to conform to laws, but it will most likely breed contempt and hatred which only leads to more hatred and dysfunction in our world.

I would be able to help you offer enlightened business models as examples to restaurants and those business persons who don't understand the value of paying employees living wages. If you would like, please contact me, I'd be happy to help.

I also gave the example of Costco vs. WalMart in their treatment of employees and how it has positively affected the operation of their firm . There was a story on the inequality.org website about this concept exactly. So, this concept is not proprietary to Quakers, nor typical totally of small business.

Thanks again for your presentation,

Glenn